Raquel Salas Rivera

Roque Salas Rivera (he/they) is a poet, translator, and editor from Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. In 2018, he was named poet laureate of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Rivera is the author of several collections of poetry, including x/ex/exis (University of Arizona Press, 2021), which won the 2018 Ambroggio Prize and lo terciario / the tertiary (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2018, and Noemi Press, 2019), which was longlisted for the 2018 National Book Award and won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Rivera is the coeditor of La piel del arrecife: Antología de poesía trans puertorriqueña (approximately translated “The Skin of the Reef: An Anthology of Puerto Rican Trans Poetry”) (La Impresora & Atarraya Cartonera, 2023), and Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), a collection of contemporary Puerto Rican poets. Rivera earned a PhD in comparative literature and literary theory from the University of Pennsylvania, and he lives, teaches, and writes in Puerto Rico. With a three-year grant from the Mellon Foundation, they worked as investigator and head of the translation team for El proyecto de la literatura puertorriqueña/The Puerto Rican Literature Project (PLPR), a free, bilingual, user-friendly and open access digital portal that anyone can use to learn about and teach Puerto Rican poetry. Source

They

what do we eat when a name dies?

yesterday your mother stopped by, but she didn't

recognize me as your friend's friend, the previous one.

what is that about, having a dead friend

in the wallet with a picture of a kidnapped kid?

have you seen my son?

he is short and collects photos of swings.

my short hair isn't professional;

your long hair doesn't prepare you.

between the two of us, we figure out how

to fake we are marionettes, not people.

it's difficult to count the days

since the last time we went out.

what is that about, going out

and not having to explain

you aren't that her

or that thing?

in this, our language,¹

there exists no plural that doesn't deny me.

¹our language is spanish. ours, but never quite mine.

Published:

2020

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Identity

LGBTQ+ Experience

Memory & The Past